Author(s): Ellen Carol DuBois

General & World History | Sue - History Books

The struggle for women's suffrage began before the Civil War when Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony started organizing for women's rights, including the right to vote. In their quest, they made common cause with abolitionists such as Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass. After the Civil War, Black men gained the right to vote, but women were left without the franchise, forcing suffragists to forge their own path. By century's end a new generation took the fight for the vote into the Progressive Era. Led by such fierce activists as Ida B. Wells-Barnett, African American women fought for suffrage, even as many white activists ignored them. Thanks to these heroic efforts Congress finally enacted voting for women with the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919, followed by a dramatic battle for ratification. Suffrage tells the story of how generations of courageous women fought one of the longest and most important social movements in American history to claim their political power. Book jacket.